


radiation?!

by LieutenantSaavik



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: F/F, Genderfluid Characters, Lesbian Characters, it's all women here, references to cats the musical (i'm so sorry), references to doctor who, references to one (1) cishet man but don't worry it's brief
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-24
Updated: 2019-04-24
Packaged: 2020-01-25 16:47:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18578536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LieutenantSaavik/pseuds/LieutenantSaavik
Summary: Anathema stared first at Aziraphale’s dark blonde curls, next at her light blue eyes, and last at the rainbow scarf she had wrapped around her neck.“Aziraphale,” she finally asked, “Am I gay?”





	radiation?!

**Author's Note:**

  * For [witching](https://archiveofourown.org/users/witching/gifts).



“Oh,” said Anathema, opening the door, “You’re--”

“Genderfluid, yes,” said Aziraphale smoothly. Crowley gave an affirming nod.

“I was going to say ‘here early,” Anathema informed the two women with a small smile, taking everything in stride. The witch believed in many things with uncompartmentalised confidence, but--unlike ley-lines, seals, whales, bicycles, rainforests (while they lasted), whole grain in loaves, and recycled paper--gender was not on the list. She stepped back and allowed the couple to file into her house. “Newt’s gone out for the whole night, so I have free reign of the place, and, well.” She gestured to her slightly haphazard living room. “Make yourselves at home.”

“Thank you,” said Aziraphale smilingly, crossing the hardwood floor and settling herself somewhat awkwardly down on a couch. Crowley joined her, casually draping an arm behind her head and curling her knees up to her chest.

Aziraphale clucked and poked her. “No feet on the sofa!”

Crowley stuck out her tongue, realised Anathema was watching, and blew a loud raspberry. Aziraphale rolled her eyes. If that’s what Crowley meant by ‘really weird things,’ she had a profound misunderstanding of ‘weird.’

“Would you like anything to drink?” Anathema asked, hiding her amusement.

“No, thank you,” said Aziraphale at the precise moment Crowley said, “Yes, please.”

Anathema raised her eyebrows and retrieved a single glass of water. “It’s all I have, for now,” she said, placing it somewhat precariously on the edge of the table directly in front of the couch. “There’s not much in the fridge. I’m,” she hesitated, “Moving. Maybe.”

“Maybe,” Crowley repeated, twitching a finger to miracle herself a merlot, “Is quite an ambiguous word to describe a life choice that important.”

“Oh,” said Anathema, watching the water turn to wine. “So _you’re_ the angel.”

“Perish the thought,” Crowley replied quickly. “No. That’s Aziraphale, bless her. I’m thoroughly Fallen, last I checked.”

“Why would you be moving?” Aziraphale asked, feigning an aura of unruffled calm. The next person who assumed Crowley was the angel, she decided, was in for a good, old-fashioned smiting.

“Something’s off here,” Anathema said, a hint of edge creeping into her voice. “The magic is--”

“Gone,” Crowley guessed.

Anathema shook her head, then nodded hesitantly. “Yes… and no. All signs--real and not--indicate that Tadfield is back to ‘normal,’ inasmuch as that word is still usable after whatever last month was.”

“Armagedidn’t,” Crowley suggested.

Anathema didn’t smile. “But I don’t believe them.” She shrugged, as if she had just said something unforgivably juvenile. “It _feels_ gone.”

“And you haven’t lost your power?” Aziraphale asked.

“Scrying, divining, and thaumaturgy all appear to be in working order. I haven’t checked on necromancy, but I believe that’s operational, too.”

She stared at Aziraphale and Crowley’s identical slack-jawed expressions. “I’m _joking_. But to answer your question, no. It’s not me that’s changed. It’s Tadfield.”

“Maybe Adam missed something when he--”

“No.” Anathema cut her off with finality. “I think… I think what I sensed before--” she stopped, delicately indicated Crowley with a small nod of her head, “Armagedidn’t--was a sort of build. A rising.”

“A crescendo?” Aziraphale suggested. Unfortunately, the soundtrack to _Cats_ was running through her head. It was thoroughly nonsensical; the moon, she reflected, could not lose its memory. Nor could it be poor, puzzled, and wearing a frown. Ah, well.

“Like an orchestra tuning up before an overture,” Anathema agreed. “And I sat through the concert, and now the finale is over. And I’m in some sort of empty theatre, waiting for a curtain that won’t rise again.”

“So you’re leaving,” Aziraphale finished.

“I’m considering it.”

Crowley tilted her head. “You don’t seem like the type to run away.”

“I just don’t know what else I ought to do here.” She cast a glance around the cottage. “I never even fully unpacked when I moved in.”

“Ought,” Crowley noted. “What else you ‘ought’ to do here?”

Anathema blinked. “Well,” she said. “Yes.”

A thought occurred to Crowley, and she unwound herself to stretch her legs. “If you do leave,” she asked, lifting and sipping her wine, “Would a certain Mister Pulsifer come with you?”

Anathema’s small, almost invisible stiffening, gave Crowley the answer she wanted.

“Ah,” Aziraphale whispered under her breath. “A breakup.”

Anathema relaxed herself, stilled a slight tremor in one of her hands. She selected a chair across from Aziraphale, sat, and looked at the angel over critically. She stared first at Aziraphale’s dark blonde curls, next at her light blue eyes, and last at the rainbow scarf she had wrapped around her neck.

“Aziraphale,” she finally asked, “Am I gay?”

Aziraphale blinked. “Currently?”

“...Yes?”

“I’m no an expert in human emotion, but were I to venture a guess, I’d say no. You appear quite glum, actually.”

There was a Brief Silence, the type often associated with an awkward family meal at the house of a culturally misinformed grandparent. Then Crowley barked out a laugh. “She means _a lesbian_ , angel. You’re lost in the early fifties.”

“Oh!” chirped Aziraphale, immediately brightening. “A lesbian! Why didn’t you say so at first, my dear?”

Anathema smiled. “That’s really why I called you over,” she confessed. “You two seem so secure.”

There was a second Brief Silence, this time the type often associated with a witch assuming two supernatural entities are currently engaged in a romance they are not actually currently engaged in, despite the fact that they have, in the past, held each other’s hands, saved each other’s lives, and, one blurred and giddy evening circa year 150, very nearly had sex.

“Secure in what,” Crowley asked suspiciously.

“Secure in your relationship, I mean.”

Aziraphale and Crowley sprang apart on the couch, both spluttering.

“We’re not--” began Aziraphale.

“It’s not--” started Crowley. “ _We’re_ not--or at least, she’s not--”

Aziraphale cleared her throat. “No.”

Then she stopped.

She turned to Crowley.

“‘She’s not,’” she quoted. “I’m not what?”

“Er,” Crowley said. “I just meant. That. Well. We’re friends.”

“I’m really sorry,” Anathema said, voice small. “I just assumed. You called her ‘angel,’ you held hands--”

“Harmless mistake,” Aziraphale assured her clippedly. “It happens all the time. Crowley,” she went on, straightening her back and radiating palpable anger, “Please continue to clarify your statement.”

“I would prefer not to.”

“And I would prefer if you kissed me, but we can’t all get what we want!” Aziraphale softened her voice. “I’m sorry. Do go on.”

Crowley gaped.

Anathema gaped.

Aziraphale looked from one to the other and realised what she had just said.

There was a third Brief Silence, this time the type often associated with two supernatural entities suddenly remembering the blurred and giddy evening circa year 150 when they very nearly had sex.

“I meant,” said Crowley carefully, “That you wouldn’t be interested in, er, me.”

Aziraphale knit her fingers together and refused to look at Crowley. “I never said that,” she declared, and promptly refused to elaborate.

The Brief Silence stopped being a Brief Silence and bloomed into a full-blown Silence, sort of like those aliens from Doctor Who.

Anathema cleared her throat. “Should I, uh, go?”

“That might be odd, considering the fact that this is, for the time being, your home.”

“Ah. Right.”

The three of them exchanged stares. Crowley groaned and took a giant gulp of wine.

Aziraphale summoned all her courage and laid a hand on Crowley’s shoulder.

Crowley looked up.

Aziraphale cleared her throat and made a gentle proposition.

“We could kiss.”

Crowley let out a choked, surprised, and thoroughly undignified squawk. Part of Anathema’s skirt caught fire, but she patted it out, unperturbed.

“For Anathema,” the angel continued. “It might help her understand herself, you know, to see. Exposure, you know. Radiation.”

“Excuse me,” Anathema asked. “Radiation?”

Crowley spared her glance. “She means representation.”

Anathema nodded. “If you think it would help.”

I think it would help _me_ , Crowley wanted to say.

Aziraphale broke into her thoughts. “And it wouldn’t be--you wouldn’t be adverse to it?”

Crowley took her angel’s hand and made a show of thinking it over. It was a good show. Better than _Cats_.

At last, she grinned. “Definitely not.”

“Don’t avert your eyes, mind,” said Aziraphale to Anathema as she shifted closer to Crowley, sneaking a well-manicured finger under the demon’s chin. “It could be important for you.”

Crowley tilted her head compliantly and leaned forward, and Aziraphale’s nose slid along hers, and there was a very small noise like static electricity, and they kissed.

Aziraphale found out that Crowley, once she was thus engaged, kissed _passionately_. Anathema found out that she would have to cough politely to get the two women to pull apart. Aziraphale had landed half on-top of Crowley and was breathing hard. Crowley, had she been in one of her other bodies, would have _been_ hard.

“Verdict?” Aziraphale asked, blushing furiously as she sat back upright.

Anathema shrugged, but she was smiling. “Seemed like you both enjoyed yourselves.”

“But what did you think of it,” Crowley managed, struggling to get her breath back under control.

“Deeply informative.”

“Really?”

“Yes.” Anathema looked at her knuckles, at her knees, at her wicker chair, at the couch, at the ceiling, out the window, and finally inside herself. “I could hardly look at it,” she admitted.

“Not promising,” Crowley remarked.

“No,” Anathema snapped, “Not like that.”

“Like what, then?”

Anathema was quiet a while before continuing. “I just thought--that’s love.”

“Well,” said Crowley, “I would hope so.”

Aziraphale shushed her.

“It’s love,” Anathema went on, gaining confidence. “That’s love, you two. You--you in the black; I don’t know your name--how you call her angel, how you drive her around, how you love her even though you shouldn’t,” her voice faltered, “How you don’t care about ‘shouldn’t.’ And you, Aziraphale--it is Aziraphale, isn’t it? How you look at her like she made your whole universe. That day, the powerplant, the rumbling in the Earth. I felt something there, something ancient and evil, and you felt it too, and you reached for her. I saw it.” She stopped. “And I’ve never seen that. That love. _That’s_ love.”

Aziraphale opened her mouth to speak. Anathema held out her hand.

“So I’m leaving Newt,” she said flatly. “I burned the book. The new one. Agnes, the mean old homophobic bitch, gave me a new one. I burned it. I can burn the relationship, too.”

Crowley opened her mouth to speak. Anathema held out her hand again.

“I’ll be _nice_ about it,” she said. “Don’t worry. I owe him that.”

There was the fourth and final Brief Silence of the day, and it defied categorisation.

“Well?” Anathema finally asked. “What do you think?”

Aziraphale turned to Crowley. Crowley spoke first.

“ _I_ think,” she began, “You’re really a…”

“A what?” Anathema asked suspiciously.

“A killer queen,” the demon said with a perfectly straight face. “Gunpowder, gelatin. Dynamite with a laser beam. Guaranteed to blow my mind.”

Aziraphale laughed. Anathema smirked. “Fastidious and precise, huh?”

“If you want to be.”

“I do,” she decided, “I do; I know that. And I also know I have a few difficult conversations ahead of me.”

“Might I suggest a road trip to the nearest gay bar?”

“We’d be happy to take you,” Aziraphale added.

“Thank you. Really, thank you. And I’d love to take you up on it, but not tonight. Tonight I think I’m going to get wine-drunk and watch something stupid on television.” She paused. “Care to join me?”

“I would,” Crowley admitted, handing Anathema a bottle that had not been present previously, and Aziraphale vigorously nodded assent.

“Perfect.” Anathema took a swig, brushed her hands down her skirt, and flopped down next to the two women on the couch. “Do either of you have any suggestions?”

“You said something stupid?”

“For sure.”

“Something fun?”

“I’d love that, yes.”

“Something lighthearted without being entirely shallow?”

“Sounds lovely.”

“Something with maybe a little bit of time-travel?”

“Sure, why not?”

“Something British?”

“Of course!”

“In that case…”

Crowley looked at Aziraphale. Aziraphale nodded.

“We have just the show for you.”

So they watched Doctor Who until 2 AM.

**Author's Note:**

> soooooooo. gay rights?


End file.
